Southeast Michigan Woodworkers

With my finishing of the hall table top I am finally getting to try out some new sanding products. After trying to do some light sanding between coats with my 400grit wet/dry paper I’ve been thinking there must be a better way. So I happened to see at Lowes, these 3M flexible rubbery sanding pads. I got to use it finally this morning as I buffed out the nibs. It’s the 400 grit pad and I used the small Detail Sanding Tool as a backer for it. It worked pretty well. A couple of light swipes across the finish and you can feel the nibs gone. You also get some nice white powrder on your hand. So just a heads up, it seems to work well and was much easier to use than the 400 grit wet/dry paper. The  rubbery flexibility is much nicer to be sure. So, 2nd coat on the table…one more Seal-A-Cell to go and then the final Arm-R-Seal begins. I wonder how many coats I should end up with on there. It is a table after all, but hopefully one that won’t see much use.

I spend the other night sanding down the table top. I ran the ROS at 120 and then 220. The sides I did by hand with a sanding block the same way. Smooth as butta after the sanding. Then I took it inside and did the dye. Eight drops of transtint vintage maple into a dixie cup of Zinser wax free shellac. I layered it on a bit thick since I knew I was going to be taking a sanding to it anyway. If it dried with some runs it would just come out.

Tonight I went to work sanding it down. I started out with just 220 grit, but it wasn’t doing the job. I moved back down to 120 and then repeated with 220. It sanded out pretty quickly and you could really tell how the end grain had soaked up the color. The maple really seems to sand down to such a glass smooth surface where the walnut always had a little grainy feel to it. I guess this is just part of the learning to work with the woods.

Of course with some good comes some bad. I noticed this with the walnut base. I find somehow during sanding/finishing I’m putting indentations into the wood. Small little divets. I also then found a couple of tearout places that didn’t come out. I don’t know how I missed it all the way up to now. I’m not sure what to do about it. I’ve already had the top thinner than I wanted. I think I’m going to just go with it. It’s very hard to see unless you’re all over it like I am sanding/finishing it. The finish actually helps hide it as it darkens the wood and with all that end grain doing funny effects. I’m just worried about how much sanding it would take to clean it all out and I don’t want to go back to the mill for have it run through the sander again.

So the first coat of Seal-A-Cell went on. It looks really good and I’m beyond psyched. I can’t wait to  get more coats on there and get to the Arm-R-Seal. I am worried about the sanding between coats, but this what learning is for.

Here are links to the before/after the dye stage.

Before / After

One of the things that I have enjoyed about SEMIWW is the varied stages of woodworking evolution of the different members.  I see others going through the same stages and interests that I have been through.  First I was smitten by the bug to make something of wood.  It quickly dawned on me that I needed to acquire tools.  I chose the handtool path because it met many of my needs, lack of shop space, quiet, not too dusty, and cheap.  After years and years of this stage, reams of sandpaper and gallons of WD-40 and time spent cleaning up rusty tools, I started doing what I had originally wanted to do, build some stuff.  

 Of course this stage requires research and practice.  First you have to learn about joinery, design and techniques then you have to practice.  Shop projects that no one else will see and small items that can be easily burned are good for this stage.  I would also recommend taking classes, besides the learning, you meet other woodworkers and get to share experiences, gloats and tall tales.  I have usually made friends with a few of the other students, found some to be really annoying, there is always someone that you can feel superior to and at least one that is so skillful that they are really intimidating.  It’s also a great way to meet the celebrity woodworkers that write books,  articles for magazines and are cited as experts on the net.  

So lastly, you reach the stage where you are fairly competent, at least the projects look similar to what you had in mind, and you have learned to hide or recover from your mistakes.  This is where I find myself and now I have two new problems.  First, I have way to many tools filling up the shop, and second what do you do with all of the stuff that you make.  My house is only so big and if I kept everything I make, my house would look like my shop.  This is where family and friends come in, you can give most of the things you make away.  I see this as having several benefits, you don’t have to look at your mistakes, everyone has different tastes so you can research many different type and styles of furniture, schedules are open ended, and if there are problems down the road you can always say, “Hey, what did you expect, it was free.”

I suppose that was the long way around to my point.  SEMIWW is going through a little upheaval at the moment, but let’s stick with it.  Thanks to a big effort by our computer savvy members, the website is working well.  The new board is slaving away on a back channel to improve meeting content and bring the fun back into our interactions.  The club is evolving and we all have to let our leaders know what interests each of us and lastly we all need to contribute our efforts to strengthen the SEMIWW.  I have enjoyed being associated with everyone in the group and I really would like to see it continue.  Woodworking is inherently a solitary activity and for me SEMIWW is an outlet that allows me to socialize with others that share the same interests and to gain and share knowledge about woodworking.

Test post, now isnt this all cool?